That Time a Jesus-is-my-Boyfriend Mix CD Broke My Heart | Sojourners

That Time a Jesus-is-my-Boyfriend Mix CD Broke My Heart

Is he singing about Jesus or ...?
A teenage girl holds her boyfriend around the waist from behind, while the boyfriend hugs a golden cross from the front.
Illustration by Melanie Lambrick

“I’m getting into you / Because you got to me in a way words can’t describe.”

WHEN I FIRST heard these lyrics in the early 2000s, I was smitten. I pressed the soft foam of my headphones against my ears to better hear the lyrics of Relient K. My crush, who we’ll call “Jamie,” had chosen this song as track one on the mix CD he burned for me. Near the top of the CD, he sharpied the name of the song: “GETTING INTO YOU” (emphasis Jamie’s).

Surely this was confirmation that Jamie didn’t just like me as a classmate — he was, as Paramore sang it best, into me. But I was naïve; I was mainline; I interpreted Relient K’s lyrics romantically when I should have approached them hermeneutically. Reader, I was so Presbyterian Church (USA) that I had never heard of the PCA. I knew there was an old rugged cross on a hill, but I’d never heard of Hillsong.

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A picture of the cover of the February/March 2023 Sojourners issue titled "The Trouble with Christian Heroes." A headshot of Jean Vanier is split apart by thick red lines and pictures of the L'Arche logo and photos of people in these communities.
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